We have reported before about
machine
learning for content creation and
robo reporting, but a
new wrinkle has developed. Will it be possible in the
future that you will not only be able to choose what
news feeds you want, but that the stories themselves
will be written just for you? According to a
post on Motherboard.com, that possibility may well be in our
future.

The post focused on a new artificial
intelligence program called Quill that can produce data
based news stories on demand. The program is in use
already, and can crunch large amounts of data in seconds
to produce a narrative report that fits the parameters
of what the reader is looking for.

The program takes a
universe of data sets and then interprets those sets
according to the preferences of the reader – whether the
reader is an audience of millions or an audience of one.
This may take biased journalism to a whole new level.

According to the creators of Quill, the power of the
program is to generate stories from large data sets for
specific audiences. They cite sports as a prime example.
One game produces a data set, but the fans of one team
will see that data produced in a different way than the
other team’s fans.

When we are already seeing
polarization of news channels based upon audience
preferences, the lack of objectivity of this type of robo-reporting may have significant consequences going
forward.